TALKING IN THE MIDDLE

he work of a writing center is as varied as the students who stream in and out the doors. A writing center encourages and facilitates writing emphasis in courses in addition to those in an English department's composition program; it serves as a resource room for writing-related materials; it offers opportunities for faculty development through workshops and consultations; and it develops tutors' own writing, interpersonal skills, and teaching abilities. Moreover, writing centers, by offering a haven for students where individual needs are met, are also integral to retention efforts, are good recruiting tools, provide a setting for computer facilities that integrate word processing with tutoring, are rich sites for research, and by their flexibility and ability to work outside of institutionalized programs are free to spawn new services and explore new writing environments. But these aspects of the work of a writing center do not define its core, its primary responsibility-to work one-to-one with writers. In doing so, writing centers do not duplicate, usurp, or supplement writing or writing-acrossthe-curriculum classrooms. Writing centers do not and should not repeat the classroom experience and are not there to compensate for poor teaching, overcrowded classrooms, or lack of time for overburdened instructors to confer adequately with their students. Instead, writing centers provide another, very crucial aspect of what writers need-tutorial interaction. When meeting with tutors, writers gain kinds of knowledge about their writing and about themselves that are not possible in other institutionalized settings, and it is this uniqueness of the tutorial setting that I will focus on here.